The Motet around 1500

On the Relationship between Imitation and Text Treatment?

Thomas Schmidt-Beste (ed)

Pages: 570 p.
Size:190 x 290 mm
Illustrations:8 b/w

Language(s):English
Publication Year:2012

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ISBN: 978-2-503-52566-2
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Review(s)

"This is likely to become and remain the definitive study of its subject for some time. (...) The depth, expertise and broader implications of understanding this crucial musical form are so important, and so well dealt with in The Motet Around 1500 that it should be recommended without hesitation to Classical Net readers interested either in the period in particular, an/or the history of music more generally." (Mark Sealey, in Classical Net, 2012, http://www.classical.net/music/books/reviews/2503525660a.php)

"(...) [I] was glad to comment so majestic a volume." (Clifford Bartlett, in: Early Music Review, Number 155, August 2013, p. 14)

"(...) these two edited volumes arising from specialist conferences provide a great service to scholarship on the music of Josquin and his contemporaries. It is heartening that the publisher of both volumes, Brepols, took on these projects and facilitated very high-quality outcomes in terms of both the research findings and the editorical excellence. Readers will find especially useful how contributors take stock of the existing state of play in their respective topics and pursue often quite different goals that expand the breadth of methodological enquiry, dispel some previously held assumptions, and encourage ever more nuanced scrutiny of the many levels of musical culture operating upon a rich repertoire." (Denis Collins, in: Journal of the Society for Musicology in Ireland, 10, 2014-15, p. 57-64. Reviewed together with Josquin and the Sublime. Proceedings of the International Josquin Symposium at Roosevelt Academy. Middleburg 12-15 July 2009.)

"Indeed the book is impeccably edited and beautifully produced." (Stephanie P. Schlagel, in: Notes, 71.3, 2015, p. 527-530)

Summary

In an article published in 1979, Ludwig Finscher defined imitation and text treatment as the main parameters of the stylistic shift he detected in motet composition around 1500, and Josquin Desprez as the composer whose works embodied them most clearly. This volume of twenty-five essays by leading Renaissance musicologists – based on a conference which took place in Bangor (Wales) in 2007 – takes stock of developments in motet research in the intervening three decades. It does focus considerable attention on text treatment and compositional technique (texture and cantus firmus manipulation as much as imitation in the strict sense), but also on questions such as regional repertoires (such as Bohemia and Spain), manuscripts (such as the ‘Medici Codex’), and semantic aspects (devotion, symbolism etc.). Josquin’s oeuvre, while still the focus of several essays, is contextualized through studies on composers as diverse as Regis, Busnoys, Obrecht, Févin, Moulu, Gascongne, Gaffurio, Martini, and Senfl. Although there are still many questions to be answered about the motet around 1500 – a period which, according to Joshua Rifkin, is like a ‘black hole’ for the genre given the lack of extant works, ascriptions, and stylistic consistency – the volume is an important step forward in exploring and understanding this crucial repertoire.